


Between Destiny And Love

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, F/M, Love, Love Is Difficult, Sorry Not Sorry, This Is Not The Soulmate Fic You're Looking For, Trope Subversion/Inversion, alternate Universe - Soulmarks, relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 18:11:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4029685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria Hill meets Clint Barton on her first mission as a full-fledged SHIELD agent, reared, geared, and ready to rumble. He walks with a swagger as most male operatives do, and she prepares to be paternalised as most female operatives are.</p><p>Sometimes love is complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between Destiny And Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



Maria Hill meets Clint Barton on her first mission as a full-fledged SHIELD agent, reared, geared, and ready to rumble. He walks with a swagger as most male operatives do, and she prepares to be paternalised as most female operatives are.

Her stomach is twisting in the throes of nervous uncertainty, so she doesn’t notice much about him apart from his height and his handshake. In her bootheels, she’s nearly the taller of the two, and the handshake is warm, dry, and grips just a little too firmly.

Halfway through the mission, he calls a change. “I need shots from your angle, Hill.”

Biting back her _why_ , Maria simply observes, “That’s not in the plan.”

“Fuck the plan.” It’s a statement, not an exclamation. “Target the pipe joints of the holding tank above them. Don’t hit anyone.”

“Won’t that give them advance warning?”

“Agent Hill, I never give advance warning.”

She doesn’t have a sniper rifle, so the shots are raw off her handgun. They hit the joints of the tank, however, and the pipes break, resulting in gush of water that sweeps out over - among other things - a rusty old drum.The drum upends from the force and spills its contents out across the roadway. One minute and one fire-arrow later, the gas is alight and spreading up towards the facility gates in the tyre-trail of old oil that slicks the bitumen.

They’re ten miles away and headed for the extraction point when the missiles roar overhead.

Barton grins at her sideways, pale blue eyes shadowed under the cowl of his hoodie. “Paranoid bastards, aren’t they?”

“Sometimes it pays off to be suspicious. Sometimes it pays to trust.”

His grin gets just a little brighter. “Yeah, sometimes it does.”

Maria feels her mouth curving in spite of the cold and the wilderness walk.

\--

They cross paths on missions pretty frequently after that. Agent Coulson takes a shine to her, and Barton is one of his. They work together. They work together _well_ , without thought or consideration.

Turns out she likes the same kinds of whiskey (smoke but not peat), listens to the same music (Motown Blues and 80s Rock), and is the only person in S.H.I.E.L.D who can match him shot for shot at the range (although she certainly can’t manage shot for shot in the bar).

He came to S.H.I.E.L.D from the circus by way of the army, which isn’t that far off from her own experience.

“No way you’re Army,” he eyes her. “Air Force?”

“Marines?”

“Seriously?” He takes another sip of whiskey. “I don’t think we can be friends now.”

“We were before?”

Coulson’s been called away to manage something else, which leaves just the two of them.

“Now you’re just hurting my feelings,” he sits back on the lounge of the bar they’re in, his hands behind his head, kicking back after a mission where he put her sniper high and went in low and dirty. “Let me tell you, I don’t let just anyone take my shots.”

Maria’s gaze is drawn to the black mark on his arm – his soulmark. It seems like an odd shape, and she’s curious, but she knows better than to ask. She knows he has a wife somewhere – he let the information slip early on, and kind of envies that he found his soulmate early.

Her own soulmark is covered over with a gauntlet. It prompts too many questions in spite of the taboos and is more trouble than it’s worth to display. There are cosmetic concealments, or longer-term grafts and counter-tatts if a person really doesn’t wish to advertise they have a soulmark, but she decided a long time ago that if she found her soulmate, she found them. And if she didn’t, well, life was too short.

It’s been moving a lot more in the last few months, pointing in a new configuration almost every night. So her soulmate is somewhere quite nearby.

She doesn’t feel any particular need to seek him out just yet, though.

Maria’s never been a believer in destiny.

–

Given her druthers, Maria would prefer a proper roof over her head.

The extraction site is nearly a thousand klicks north-east, and while they could drive all night, they didn’t particularly want to. So a tent pitched in the depths of the dry riverbed is their accomodation for the night. Lying in the cramped tent, though, with Barton snoring lightly beside her, Maria thinks she doesn’t mind it so much. It feels...comfortable, like coming home.

The next morning changes all that.

Barton’s leaning over her, his expression grim, and she tenses. “What’s happened?”

He moves his arm over her – staring at his inside forearm, and Maria can’t understand what— Then he picks up her arm and turns it over, his fingers stroking over her bared soulmark—

She jerks up into a sitting position and only realises how close they are when she looks up from her soulmark into his face.

“No,” is what comes out of her mouth.

In answer, he moves his left arm around her, watching the ink-like lines shift so the muzzle of the gun is always pointed at her heart. Then he picks up her left wrist and moves her arm around him, and they watch the point of the arrowhead-compass shift to align with his heart.

It’s too hot to breathe inside the tent. Maria takes back her arm, and shoves her way past him and out into the morning’s burning sun and finds she can’t breathe out here either.

She’s not sure she’ll ever draw a clean breath again.

–

“You got married.” _To someone else._

They’re halfway to the pickup point when she voices the accusation. They packed in silence, without speech. And were no longer surprised when he was there to take the stuff she handed out to him, or that she knew to duck when he was pulling out the tent poles.

“I didn’t... Look, I didn’t believe in that shit, okay?”

Maria stares out the window at the parched land they’re passing – endless rolling hills of cattle and sheep and occasionally fields of grain. “Unfortunately, that shit happened to believe in you.”

He stops the car. Brakes hard and comes to a dead stop. In the middle of a highway that is, admittedly, empty, but still. She stares at him, “What—?”

He turns to look at her. “You are _not_ shit.”

“What?”

“My issues with—This isn’t—It wasn’t about you, okay?”

She holds up her arm. “Newsflash, Barton—”

“When I married Laura—” He sets his shoulders and leans his head back on the headrest. “You hear stories, okay? About the things that go wrong. And everything else in my life had been crap up until that point – I thought why would this,” he lifted his left arm, “be any different?”

“Comforting.” The sarcasm is an easy refuge. The car on the distant horizon behind them is a convenient distraction. “And we’ve got incoming.”

He glances in the rearvision mirror and starts the car up again. “For what it’s worth,” he says as they accelerate to the speed limit, “I’m sorry.”

Maria swallows the ache in her throat. “So am I.”

–

Maria doesn’t ask for a transfer, exactly. But she takes more assignments where she knows he won’t be involved, avoids the haunts they used to share, doesn’t look him up when they’re in the same location. There’s disappointment and there’s temptation. She’s felt the sting of the first, and she’d rather avoid the second.

And, too, S.H.I.E.L.D begins to offer opportunities she’d never previously considered before.

“You managed the Pacific Atoll situation very capably,” Senior Agent Hand observes. “You’ve a skill for seeing the big picture. Have you ever considered moving into Operations Logistics?”

“No.”

“Well, start to. It’s not the most exciting of paths, but it does lead to bigger and more interesting things.”

She starts working with the handlers; running missions instead of being sent out on them. She graduates to organising operational clusters not just individual ops. She gets sent out to the various facilities that S.H.I.E.L.D has operating all through the US and around the world.

Clint is off with the Strike Teams, working on something out in Eastern Europe – a manhunt. Maria doesn’t know where and although she could find out, she doesn’t want to. Her soulmark mocks her every time she looks at it – a reminder of what she was supposed to have and never will.

And then Director Fury commends one of her clusters, and suddenly she’s overseeing whole branches of S.H.I.E.L.D, with authority she never expected to have this fast, and with no time for a personal life – assuming her soulmate was even free.

Ambition isn’t a replacement for love; but it does the job decently enough.

–

Maria has plenty of reasons to hate Chicago.

On a grey and miserable fall day, she finally has one less.

The mourners are mostly cops. They mostly don’t talk to her. His captain mumbles something about devotion to duty, but they both know that it was really the obsession of a man who had nothing in his life because he pushed everything else out – including his daughter.

She waits until the graveside is empty of mourners, then thanks the priest and accepts his blessing and heads for the gates.

And pauses when she sees the man leaning against her hire car.

“Did Coulson tell you?”

“He didn’t have to.” He pushes his sunglasses up onto his head, his gaze as direct and piercing as the arrows he shoots. “S.H.I.E.L.D has personnel rosters, so I keep track of yours.”

She doesn’t need this now. Or ever. “I don’t keep track of yours.”

“I know.” Clint shrugs, broad shoulders in a perfectly-cut suit. “I don’t expect you to. That’s your choice, and this is mine.”

“You came all the way out here to tell me that?”

He cracks the tiniest smile at her. “Well, I also thought you could do with company on the way home.”

They sit together on the commercial flight back, shoulders brushing. He passes her the ginger beer and she takes it without looking. She hands him an article he’d like, he reads it with a ‘hnh’ of amusement but no comment.

They drive from Dulles to the Triskelion with her playlist of Motown Blues filling the SUV.

–

It gets a little easier after that.

They meet up after missions – just a drink and a bitch – always public spaces, always leaving apart. They touch in glances – her shoulder bumping his, his hand patting her on the arm, his arm along her back as they make their way through a crowd. They’re companionable and friendly and careful, because they may be soulmates, but he’s married and that matters to both of them.

And then he returns from a termination mission with his target in tow. And not just any target, but Natasha Romanoff , the infamous Black Widow.

The S.H.I.E.L.D grapevine explodes in chatter: admiring, appalled, critical, derisive, and dismissive. Everyone has an opinion on the situation: why he brought her in, what he was thinking, where his loyalties really lie, whether he was fucking her all along.

Everyone has something to say about it.

Nearly everyone.

“It suddenly strikes me,” Fury says one day, “that Agent Hill hasn’t weighed in on this question.”

Heads turn. Maria holds herself perfectly still. “I didn’t think it was necessary.”

“It is now. I’m assigning you as handler to the Black Widow.”

The room buzzes, pique mingling with outrage mingling with speculation. “Sounds like you’d already decided what we’re doing with her, sir.”

“I _am_ the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D,” he reminds her. “I got a bright shiny badge says I get to make the decisions. And my decision is that, tag, you’re it. Go work out what we’re doing with the Widow.”

\--

Maria finds Clint at the shooting range, firing rounds like his life depends on it. Rather than talk over the noise, she goes through her own practise routine –‘cutting out’ the paper targets with her shots, starting with the smallest ring and working outwards.

He watches her as she stitches up the head of the target, waiting for the final silence as the paper man wafts gently to the floor.

“Venezuela?”

“They’re hiding something big but I couldn’t see the angles quite right. I recommended Charmian to follow up – the Minister has an eye for a pretty woman.” She puts the weapon down. “According to the grapevine, so do you.”

He stares at the shredded paper target, far down the end of the range. “I was going off the rails when S.H.I.E.L.D recruited me. If they hadn’t picked me up, I’d have been out on dishonourable discharge. S.H.I.E.L.D gave me solid ground – saved my life. Maybe she needs the same thing.”

Maria considers the assessment; she’d already come to much the same conclusion, albeit several months earlier when S.H.I.E.L.D’s hunt for Romanoff began in earnest. Admittedly, she hadn’t voiced it to anyone – not even Clint. “Fury assigned me to work with her.”

Clint pauses, parsing that information. “Does he know?”

“Can you see him _not_ knowing?” They exchange looks; resignation and ruefulness. “I’m not going to deal with her lightly because of you, Clint.”

His mouth lifts at the corners in a wry smile, and his knuckles lift to graze her jaw – about as much tenderness as they allow. “I wouldn’t expect otherwise, Maria.”

\--

Professionally, Maria’s impressed by Romanoff. The woman matches Clint in the field like a glove fitted to his hand. Although it seems to Maria that much of it is Romanoff’s own training: fit in, match, meet, meld, and don’t make waves. Be brilliant, but don’t stand out – slide under the radar as often as possible – if seeming harmless isn’t an option, then don’t raise hackles.

Personally, her feelings are mixed. She sometimes wishes she was the one out there in the field, watching Clint’s back; but that’s not her forte and given what they are to each other, too much contact could be problematic.

Of course, the partnership between Clint and Romanoff means the Russian makes an excellent stalking horse. So long as tongues are wagging about her and Clint, nobody gives Maria a second look.

Except Romanoff herself, of course.

“You know he’s married.”

Maria doesn’t look up from the mission plans on the meeting room table. “Yes, he is.”

“But he loves you.”

“Yes,” Maria says, “he does.”

Romanoff continues to study her. Maria keeps making notes on the plans. Then, finally, Romanoff sits down. “May I see it?”

Maria lifts her gaze, slightly startled by the request. “You know that’s rude.”

“And yet I still asked.” The lovely face smiles, inscrutable. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

Maria shows her the compass-head and they watch it shift subtly with Clint’s movements through the building. And then Romanoff rolls up her sleeve, and shows Maria the scarlet star sitting inside concentric rings of silvery grey.

Her smile at Maria’s expression is thin. “Your soulmate is alive, at least. They tell me that Captain America was dead before I was ever born.”

\--

Maria takes a deep breath and presses the bell for the pretty house in the middle of stubbled fields, then turns to look out at the half-finished yard and the rough barn that needs a coat of paint and curses Fury to hell.

“Yes?”

Maria turns and meets the gaze of the woman on the other side of the screen door. “He’s alive.”

Laura Barton exhales – a short huff of something like exasperation. “You don’t do this very often, do you? Come in.”

“You haven’t even asked for my credentials.”

Dark eyes survey her. “I don’t need to. You’re Agent Hill.”

Inside the home that Clint made with another woman, Maria tells Laura Barton about the ex-colonel with the grudge against her husband, what S.H.I.E.L.D knows, what they’re doing about the situation. Her voice doesn’t waver, her hands don’t shake, and she meets the steady gaze of Clint’s wife without flinching. She’s not a coward, and she’s not a cheater, and she’s done nothing of which she should be ashamed.

But the silence at the end is one of the hardest she’s ever sat through.

Finally, Laura sighs. “And how are you dealing?”

“Excuse me?”

A small laugh. “I’m a military wife of over ten years, Maria. You think you’re telling me anything I haven’t heard before? Fury could have sent me anyone; he sent me you. You don’t think that’s deliberate?”

“I think this is a conversation I don’t want to have.”

“Especially with me? That’s fair.” Laura studies her for a moment, then her mouth quirks. “Tell Fury he’s an old goat, and stupid to boot if he’s not using you to find Clint.”

–

The problem – as Maria knows only too well – is that using her to find Clint is a complicated and resource-intensive proposition, since the world is large and her mark is very small. Besides, Romanoff’s intel is considerably faster than Maria playing ‘Marco Polo’ with her arm – and much less embarrassing for all involved after the clusterfuck that becomes known simply as ‘Budapest’.

But she’s flying the quinjet that brings them in; and he comes into the cockpit long enough for his hand to rest on her chair back, bare knuckles pressing lightly against the line of her shoulder, out of sight of her co-pilot, and barely visible to anyone in the hold.

“Thanks for the pickup.”

“Count yourself lucky Fury likes you,” she retorts without looking around.

He smiles – she can feel it even if she’s not looking – and goes back to the hold.

But this time, when he goes home, it’s the hardest Maria’s ever found their separation. Because now she has a face and a place and a name, and the knowledge that what he has isn’t a life she could ever have given him. She’s not a refuge and she never was, and it hurts.

She deals with it, because dealing with it is what she does and who she is.

In a way it makes her free to know where she belongs, to whom she belongs, even if she’s denied that. Some people never know their soulmate, and some people never know what they can be.

Maria knows both.

And then New Mexico happens, Loki takes him, and Maria makes a choice: the world or her soulmate.

No need to ask what she chooses.

–

There’s a knock at the door of the bathroom.

“Come in.”

Clint closes the door behind him and their eyes meet in the mirror. His gaze skims the scarlet slash across her cheek and at her temple, and his expression hardens. For a moment Maria thinks he might go straight out again and turns to face him. Then suddenly he’s in her arms, pushing her back against the counter, whole and exhausted and in his right mind and clinging to her as though he’d never let her go.

And it doesn’t make everything better. People are dead, people they knew, and the world will never be the same after this, but holding him – being held by him – feels like coming home. It’s all the things she’s never had and never wanted, not even after she met him. Except she has them now and she wants them now, and after the stress and terror and tension of the last few days, it’s the best thing in the world to have his hands on her shoulders, on her nape, holding her face—

God, he feels beautiful and smells amazing; warm and lean in her arms, leather and oil in her nostrils – alive and real and _Clint_ when she’d had to face the possibility that he was gone, just a shadow of her soulmate—

And her heart is pounding in her chest. She can’t breathe. They don’t touch like this, not ever, not before. The callouses on his fingertips scrape against her nape, and his body is warm and firm and hard against hers, his back heaving with the burden of what he’s done, what he became those last few days—

He’s murmuring something into her hair, like a mantra: _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—_ And there’s so much in those words, so much that needs to be said, that Maria lifts her head to look him in the eye—

Their mouths are close – so close, breath-skimmingly close, and she’s never kissed him, not once in five years—her soulmate— _hers—_

Maria shoves him away with all the strength she has in her. “No.”

Clint staggers back, and his palms hit the door with a slap. He looks as dazed as she feels, his hands scrabbling for purchase, and for a moment it feels like the door is the only thing holding him up as the counter is the only thing holding her up. “Maria…”

She swallows hard, and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Never mind that they didn’t kiss, she can _feel_ — “Get out.”

He makes a movement like he’s about to push himself off the door. “Maria—” Whatever he sees in her face stops him and he drops his hand.

“Go,” she tells him, the words choking her throat. “Please.”

She stands there for a long time after he’s gone, with an ache too strong for tears.

–

When she finally leaves the bathroom, she needs to hurt something, and she figures a punching bag is safer than some idiot whose only sin is stupidity.

Except that when she reaches her usual tiny gym space in the helicarrier, it’s already occupied. And occupied, moreover, by a man who should really be off celebrating somewhere.

She watches him for a moment, unguarded, unobserved. Not the brisk summary she gave him on the bridge before, but a longer look at grace and muscle and courtesy and curiosity. Of course, his shirt is stained with sweat now, and his face is pink and flushed, but that doesn’t take away from the man.

“Lieutenant.” Steve Rogers pauses to give her a brief nod.

“And here I thought I was the only one the punching bag done wrong.”

Blue eyes lift to her face, startled. His expression softens. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here. Figured they’d all be out celebrating.”

“The same could apply for you.”

Rogers shrugs, his roughly-bandaged hands stilling the punching bag. “I’m a little out of practise at celebrating. Missed the VE Day celebrations, so they tell me. And comfort food downtown isn’t quite enough.” He looks up at her. “I’d have thought you’d have plenty of people to celebrate with.”

“People to celebrate with, yes. People I _want_ to celebrate with…?” Only really one. And she can’t risk it. “Now, a fight I could do.”

He stares at her, surprised. “You’d fight _me_?”

“You’ve just fought an army of Chitauri and saved the world, and you’re giving that punching bag seven kinds of hell instead of nine kinds of hell. You’re tired.” The smile steals across his lips as she adds, “And I’m not the Black Widow, but I’m not terrible either.”

He takes her measure from top to toe. He does it with a certain amount of appreciation in it but Maria’s ego isn’t complaining at being admired right now, even by Romanoff’s—

But there her thoughts stutter. Because the long, strong forearms are smooth and clean, without scar or soulmark.

“Lieutenant?” When she meets his gaze, he’s looking at her questioningly. “Something wrong?”

“No,” she tells him, not sure what to make of her shock. “Nothing. Unless you’re not going to give me a good fight, in which case, I’ll have my punching bag back, thanks.”

Rogers wins, of course – once he gets over hitting a woman – but Maria gives him a good fight and the bruises and the physical ache are a counterbalance to the ache in her soul.

–

In the wake of the Battle of New York, the world changes.

Fury is tickled by the way she blackmails up the World Security Council, and promotes her to Deputy Director. Project Insight is greenlit, and Helicarrier One is decommissioned and its personnel moved elsewhere. The Avengers scatter – Thor back to Asgard, Stark back to his Tower, taking Banner with him, Rogers joins Romanoff in the Strike Teams, and Clint goes back to his little house on the prarie and his little wife.

He sends her one text before he flies out. _Don’t let Fury drown you in work._

In fact, work is the only thing keeping Maria halfway sane. Coulson’s gone – or as good as. May’s a mere shadow of the woman she used to be. Hand’s managing The Hub. Romanoff’s managing Rogers. And Clint can’t be hers.

Maria gets a shiny office in the Times Square facility and moves her staff and her punching bag there. She works herself to sleep and when that doesn’t work, workouts herself to sleep. She sleeps on a bedroll under her desk more often than not.

The first time she finds Rogers using the bag, she’s a little surprised.

“My punching bag _really_ done you wrong.”

He drags his bare left arm across his brow, sweaty and smiling. “Would you believe I had to track it down through Internal Resourcing?”

Internal Resourcing is a nightmare: red tape, bureaucrats, mind-numbing paperwork, and triplicate insanity. That he found it at all is a miracle. “Maybe we should put you on Operations Logistics, Rogers.”

“Now you’ve got me wondering if _I_ done you wrong, Hill.”

His smile curls her insides. It’s probably not supposed to, but it does.

Discomforted, Maria crosses over to the mats and works through a pilates warm up, avoiding his gaze and any conversation he wants to make until the punching starts up again.

–

Romanoff doesn’t seem daunted by the realisation that Rogers doesn’t carry her mark – that the soulmark she carries isn’t reflected on him. She doesn’t seem interested in Rogers either, which Maria struggles to understand.

Her own attraction to him is unexpected and visceral. It’s more than a little uncomfortable, too, because it’s been a long time since she looked at anyone but Clint. However, with Rogers turning up at her workout room every fortnight or so, her hormones start clamouring and it’s damned inconvenient.

At least she can do something about her hormones.

She can’t do anything about the fact that Captain America seems to have adopted her. From morning coffee to lunch on her desk to late night workouts where he holds the bag while she punches and they talk about everything or nothing.

“I think it’s cute,” Romanoff says one evening after a mission where Rogers brings them snacks from the lounge where the Strike teams are sitting around shooting shit, and snaffles an entire plate of Maria’s favourites, as well as a bottle of the beer she likes. “He’s got a crush on you, sweetie-pie.”

“If you’re going to sing, at least let me finish the beer before the bottle shatters,” Maria tells her, taking another swig to fortify her against the question she’s about to ask. “And how are Laura and the children?”

It stings less than it did. Time and distance help.

So does the knowledge that she couldn’t have given Clint what he needed after New York.

She’s seen him a few times since then, mostly among other people, although once he sat down at her table at lunch and they talked like normal people and friends. Since she’s not in the field anymore – not even working on Logistics, they don’t cross paths quite as often; and there’s less chance for casual socialisation.

It’s both a relief and a raw strip out of her hide. But Maria has it mostly levelled with herself.

“Cooper’s class got asked to write an essay on what their fathers did for work.”

She nearly chokes on the beer. “Oh, God, no.”

“Oh, God, yes.” Natasha smiles. “They got called in and Laura chose the warpath.”

Maria laughs at the story as Natasha shares it. She thinks that, under other circumstances, she’d have liked Clint’s wife.

Other circumstances such as Laura not being married to Maria’s soulmate.

–

And then, on the eve of Project Insight going live, everything goes to hell.

Fury isn’t quite dead, Pierce is taking over, S.H.I.E.L.D is hunting Captain America, and Maria has a bad feeling about Project Insight.

When she gets Rogers and Romanoff and their new best friend from the Falcon Corps to Fury’s secret bunker, she finds out why. And can hear Clint in her head, _Well, looks like it’s hell or HYDRA water._

Clint, who’s on a blackout mission and not due to check in for a week, whose home and family are off the books, who’s well out of this. Maria spares a moment to thank God, and then gets down to work.

The truth is that Maria’s missed Operations Logistics; being in there, doing the ground work, getting into the mission. Working with Rogers seems perfectly natural after all those late-night conversations at the punching-bag, and Wilson fits right in – softly-spoken, but with a core of steel.

He’s also more sensible than either her or Rogers, taking himself off to bed before midnight.

“Been a long day, and tomorrow’ll be longer.” He taps Rogers on the shoulder. “I’ll check in on Natasha on the way. She was pretty shocky after the attack.”

Maria sees something more in Rogers’ expression, though, and waits until Wilson’s out of earshot. “Spit it out.”

Rogers hesitates, then indicates the gauntlet covering her soulmark. “Do you know who yours is?”

“Yes.” Then, because he’s waiting, she simply says, “He’s already with someone.”

He nods, accepting the explanation without question. “Natasha thought I was her soulmate at first. A star inside a circle, right?”

“Red, not white, and the circle was pale grey. I thought it was odd at the time—” Maria’s eyes widen as she makes the connection with what she’s seen in the last day. “Barnes?”

“Bucky’s soulmark – back when he still had a left arm – was two little red triangles pointing at each other.” Rogers grimaces. “Hell of a way to find your soulmate.”

Maria looks at her gauntlet and thinks of a tent in a dry riverbed, and a house in the American midwest. “Sometimes,” she says, “I wonder if a soulmark isn’t more trouble than it’s worth.”

–

Clint calls her ten minutes after his check-in is due.

“You’re okay.”

It’s a statement not a question, but she confirms it for him. “Not even a scratch this time.” Then she regrets calling back the memory of ‘last time’ and what it – and the aftermath – involved. “I’m working for Stark these days.”

“Stark? Really?”

“Privatising world security.” And trying to marshal what’s left of S.H.I.E.L.D into something resembling a force capable of striking back should something threaten the world again. The problem is that she doesn’t have the force of personality for it – not for welding the remnants back together.

So one week after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D, she’s made a decision – and informed Fury – she’ll leave Coulson to do from the shadows what she can’t do from the light, and do something she _can_ do with her connections to Rogers and Stark and Romanoff and Clint.

“You’re going to run Operations Logistics for the Avengers, aren’t you?”

He knows her too well. “Stark’s been trying to get the band back together again for a year now. And since Thor’s been back in town, he wants the scepter found. It vanished even before HYDRA let loose, but Fury was keeping it quiet.”

“Kind of embarrassing when we can’t keep our own inventory straight.” Clint notes. “All right. I’ve got some ends to tie up, but I’ll be out of here in a week. For whatever that’s worth now.”

“You’re alive,” she says before she can overthink it. “That’s worth a lot.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Nat said you walked into the Triskelion behind Cap.”

“They needed someone who knew all the back doors.” She sits back in her chair. “Don’t go neanderthal on me. You don’t have the right.”

“My soulmark says I do.”

Of all the times for him to get overprotective! “This is what I do and who I am and nobody is going to tell me what I can and can’t do.” _Not even you._

“You’re a target now.”

“And you’ve always been a target, but I’ve never tried to limit you to my comfort zone. You get to care, Clint – you don’t get to dictate.”

The silence on the other end isn’t pleased. “I don’t like it.”

“Well, welcome to my world.” Maria takes a deep breath and lets it out. “I’ll see you when you get out.”

–

“Glad to see you brought the punching bag with you,” Rogers says from the doorway a couple of hours later. “I was worried how I’d find it without the assistance of Internal Resourcing.”

Maria snorts as she steadies the swinging bag. “You might have had to ask me directly.”

His smile is wry. “You prefer the direct approach, don’t you?”

 _Straight and true as an arrow’s flight,_ she thinks. “It uncomplicates things.”

“Okay.” He eases himself off the doorjamb and comes towards her. Maria doesn’t realise she’s stepped back until her shoulderblades hit the wall. And even then she still doesn’t realise he’s coming for her until his hands cup her head and his mouth comes down on hers.

There’s warmth – a testing and a tasting. A little stiff, although it softens after a second or two during which he seems to be waiting for her to react, possibly with a gloved fist in his gut. But Maria’s not about to stop him. Something in her wants to be wanted, even if it’s not the man she’d prefer.

And Rogers definitely wants her, if the body pressing her back against the wall is any indication. Simple and uncomplicated.

Well, as uncomplicated as it can be.

It’s not rushed, not hurried, but there’s no hesitation either. He explores her like she’s something new; she learns what makes a supersoldier shiver.

There’s a moment when, poised to take him, Maria feels guilt clutch hard at her heart and belly. This is all _wrong_ – the wrong man—too broad in the shoulders, too lean in the hips, his expression too open, his hands calloused in the wrong places—

Underneath her, Rogers tenses. “Maria?”

She pushes the guilt away and shoves herself onto him, all the way to the hilt – a hot and heavy invasion of flesh and intimacy. He thrusts up beneath her, and she thrusts back. And then it’s on and she’s riding him like a cowboy while he bucks like the prize stallion, and it’s been so long—too long—and, no, he’s not—but she won’t think—can’t think—she can _have_ this—she _wants_ this—

Afterwards, Rogers pulls her down to stretch out on top of him, with her head tucked under his chin, and his hand cupping her nape, while his heartbeat hammers beneath her flattened palm.

Maria’s heartbeat is hammering at her ribs, too.

No soulbonds. No bindings. No great and amazing meaning to it.

Just sex. Really, really good sex.

–

By the time Clint comes to see her, Maria’s levelled her guilt. She maintains that just because she took herself out of the field once before doesn’t mean she’s obligated to stay safe just so he doesn’t have to worry about her. He allows – rather grudgingly – that she’s free to do what she wants with her life.

And she doesn’t mention she’s fucking Steve Rogers.

It’s just fucking.

Well, ‘just’ in that they’re both of them a little emotionally crippled, so it’s not exactly romantic.

Maria wants someone she can’t have. She’s smart enough to realise that so does Rogers. And if they’re not precisely stand-ins for the person they can’t have, they’re still choosing physical intimacy and avoiding emotional intimacy.

It’s not cheating. It’s not wrong. It’s just not something she wants to discuss.

And it’s a little awkward.

The Avengers aren’t a team the way S.H.I.E.L.D Strike Operations understood the term. They’re too disparate, too individual, too headstrong to be the kind of team that lives in and out of each others’ pockets, knowing all the details of each other’s lives. They have their own interests and their own social groups to maintain, and there’s a line between what they’ll share with the others and what they keep private.

So Clint doesn’t know about Steve, and while Steve knows that her soulmate is unavailable, he doesn’t know it’s Clint. And they work together and don’t know and Maria is very relieved.

It’s...neat. Clinical. And, yes, a bit bloodless.

But it works.

It works all through that summer when the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D are hunting HYDRA cells, into the fall when Steve’s off hunting Bucky and she’s giving support to Coulson – a whole other set of compartmentalisations – and into the chill of winter when, one by one, the Avengers return to the Tower.

And Maria finds she’s...not content, exactly, but closer to it than she’s been ever since the morning she woke up in a tent to find Clint leaning over her with the gun of his soulmark pointed at her heart.

–

It can’t last forever, of course.

“At some point one or the other of them will find out.” Natasha says one evening while Maria is reviewing the last pieces of a major mission. “And then you’ll have a lot of questions to answer.”

Maria could point out that Natasha’s interest in Bruce Banner beyond The Lullabye they’re using to work with the Hulk is just as problematic as her own relationship with Steve. Instead she notes, “I’ll deal with it when it happens – if it happens.”

There are too many other things to think about: the Inhumans and the Kree city that Coulson’s team are investigating; the instability of world politics as countries scramble to develop their own superheroes, loyal to their interests; the power surges that have been registered in Eastern Europe, pointing to the sceptre’s location.

The fact that Clint’s going to be a father again.

That one comes as an unexpected jolt – one that leaves her shaken.

It’s not even as though she ever wanted kids.

The next time she’s with Steve, she pushes him, urging him on, harder, deeper, more, and although he doesn’t understand why, he gives her what she asks for. In return, she claws his back hard enough to draw blood.

And in the panting aftermath, with the scent of sex and blood hanging in the air, Maria turns her head so her tears run off into the pillow.

Thankfully, this time Steve doesn’t roll off immediately, which gives her a little time to gather herself together so when he does lift his head, she doesn’t look like she’s been crying while having sex with him.

Until his voice comes out of the darkness, gentle, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly.”

But she runs her hand over the gouges she’s ripped in his shoulders in silent apology, and he turns his face into her throat and settles down with his arms around her.

The quiet of the night drifts in.

Six hours later, Maria wakes up on the other side of the bed from Steve like the couple they aren’t. Cold panic fills her before she eases out of the sheets, puts on her clothing, and sneaks out just before dawn.

–

Maria doesn’t detour past the medlab until after she’s gotten everything organised for Stark’s ‘We Finished The Job’ party.

She meets Natasha on the way out looking buoyant. “How is he?”

Natasha tilts her head. “You can ask him yourself.”

He looks up as she enters, sitting half-naked on the edge of the guerney, his trousers riding low on his hips. His eyes light up at the sight of her. “Hey. Dr. Cho says it’s as good as new.”

Maria ignores the way her heart leaps at the sight of him – alive and well and hale and whole. “A close encounter with a speeding bullet?”

His expression hardens. “I’ll speeding bullet _him_ if I catch him.”

“Pietro Maximoff?”

“That’s his name?” Clint gestures behind her, and she hands him the shirt. “Bastard turned me around. I’ll be ready for him next time.”

Maria watches him put it on – a small gratification in the midst of all the other things she’s denied – then wishes she hadn’t when he sees her watching. She steps back as he steps forward, his expression hesitant.

“You okay?”

“Stark wants a party. I had to do some organising.”

“Yeah, I heard about that.” Clint tucks his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his bare heels. “Maria...afterwards – after the party, I’ll be going home.”

“I know.” Or, at least, she guessed. With a third child on the way, and the loose ends of Loki’s invasion all tied up, Clint was never going to stick around.

“I wish—”

She cuts him off before he can say anything, make words out of what was only ever possibility. “I’m glad you’re okay, but you’d better get cleaned up.” Her voice is bright and false and sharp, but it’s not a surprise.

The truth is she’s been in a slow retreat since the day she realised she could never be his.

This is just the ending she hoped would never come.

–

Steve finds her standing out on the balcony, letting the city wind raise goosebumps along her arms while the party rages on inside. “Aren’t you cold out here?”

“A little.” She manages a smile. “You get used to it after a while.”

“Yes, but anyone gets used to anything after a while,” Steve notes. “That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good for you. Here.” He sheds his jacket and offers it to her.

Maria only hesitates a moment, slipping into the still-warm depths of it, and curling her hands inside the cuffs. “Thanks. Very gentlemanly.”

“Well, it’s prefacing an apology for earlier. I may have...come across as bitter.”

_Letting a German scientist experiment on them? Who even does that?_

“I should apologise; I was distracted.” Too caught up in what was happening to Clint to think of what she was implying in criticising the twins.

“No, it’s okay. We ask a lot of you. And you deliver, every time. It’s...impressive.”

She shrugs a little, keeping her expression nonchalant, quietly revelling in the scent of him that rises from the inside of the jacket. “It’s the job.”

“I know. I know that, and still...”

There’s something lost in his expression as he looks out over the rail, a haunted yearning that she’s seen more often in him since the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. At first she thought it was just the knowledge that Barnes was out there refusing to be found. In the last six months, she’s come to realise that it’s something more. That Steve feels there’s a piece missing from his life, only he doesn’t know quite what.

Maria struggles with something to say. But even as she opens her mouth, Steve lifts his eyes to her and smiles, a little forced. “I bet this wasn’t in the job description when you signed up with S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“I don’t think dealing with supersoldier angst was even a thing back then.” Maria thinks back to those earliest days, back when she’d been with the Marines, before she came to S.H.I.E.L.D, found a life she wanted, found her soulmate and realised she’d never have him. _After the party, I’ll be going home..._ “The world’s changed so much in ten years.”

“Yeah, well, try seventy.”

She pauses for effect more than because she has to think about it. “Okay, you win.”

Steve huffs once with laughter. “I don’t think winning the Angst Olympics is something to be particularly proud of.”

“We take our victories where we can.”

His head turns and his body shifts slightly, for a moment thinks he’s going to kiss her on the top of her head or put his arm around her shoulders. Then he seems to shake himself. “Yeah, we do.” His tone of voice is markedly lighter. “Which means we should probably enjoy this party while it lasts.” He turns around, and it seems to her that he sets his shoulders as he offers her his arm, proud as a prince. “Shall we go back in?”

–

_We’ve taken a hit._

Tony is frank, and a little shaken. It’s not obvious, but Maria’s learned to recognise the subtle signs of Tony’s nightmares in the last couple of years. She’s also learned to read between the lines when it comes to the Avengers – and whatever went down in Klaue’s scrapyard wasn’t just a physical fight.

_She has neuroelectric interfacing...telekinesis...mental manipulation..._

Clint’s already had his headspace violated once before. Maria knows he has nightmares, although he’s never told her what he sees in them. So this would have been...worse. Trauma on top of trauma.

She wants to ask if he’s okay. She wants to speak to him, although he’s flying the plane. She can’t.

And Steve... The question rises within her, pauses on her lips. She can’t ask that either.

When Tony says they’re going to lay low for a while, she knows where they’re going.

When the connection cuts off, she sits in her empty apartment in Stark tower, with her Captain America poster on the wall, and scrubs at the tears that won’t stop falling.

She’s not a refuge and she never was.

–

The hold of Helicarrier One, once full of supplies and spare parts, has become a holding space for the Sokovian refugees.

She sees Steve immediately, crouched beside an older couple, speaking with them, his pose reassuring and uplifting – strength and endurance in the face in insurmountable odds. And she finds it...comforting...to know that he survived and is going to walk out of this intact. Maybe a little scarred inside, maybe a little older and wiser, but intact. It counts.

Clint takes a second longer to spot. He’s crouching down by the tall green...humanoid, facing a young woman with unnaturally red hair across the body of a fallen— _Oh_.

He looks up as though she called his name. And something them will always point to the other’s heart, no matter how many times he goes home, or how many lovers she takes.

They can’t help that, and all the things they _could_ help have since been taken from their control.

This is what’s left.

Maria can’t cradle the new scars he holds in his eyes. And she won’t try. That’s not who she is, and it’s time she accepted that.

“So,” Steve approaches her, his expresion intent and wary, “You were working with Fury all along?” At least he seems more resigned about it than angry.

She looks up at him. “I have a lot of contacts you don’t know about, Steve. I’m not required to disclose all of them.”

“Can I trust you to tell me the relevant ones?”

“Can you trust my judgement in deciding which ones are relevant?”

He gives her a very hard, very steady look. “I’m sure you’ll let me know if I’m not.”

Maria looks back at him, surprised by the assumptions in his words. Something about him is...different. He looks...renewed, like a burden’s been lifted from his shoulders. Whatever fire he went through under Maximoff’s manipulations – she makes a mental note to have a chat with the young woman at the first available opportunity – it burned away his doubts.

He sees her staring and doesn’t look away. “We need to talk. Can I come to you later?”

“Yes. But I didn’t bring the punching bag with me.”

Steve’s mouth curves, warm and oddly intimate. “I think we’ll manage without it.”

And he heads off, brushing his fingers down the sleeve of her old S.H.I.E.L.D uniform – over the soulmark that points to another man’s heart.

The man who watches Steve walk back out to the refugees, his eyes slightly narrowed.

–

“So, how long?”

Maria doesn’t look up from the status board and doesn’t ask what he means. “Since just after S.H.I.E.L.D fell.”

“ _Just after_ —?”

“How long have you been with Laura?”

Clint pauses. “That’s different.”

She faces him, wishing they could have had this conversation elsewhere. It’s the graveyard shift and she’s solitary at one of the consoles but all it would need is one gossip. But she doesn’t want to go anywhere alone with him, and they need this cleared up now.

“So you’re allowed your wife and family, out of sight and off the books, but I have to stay solitary for the rest of my just wishing and hoping and dreaming and praying that someday you might decide I’m worth it after all?”

“No!”

Except she suspects what he really means is ‘ _Yes._ ’

“Do you remember the conversation we had after S.H.I.E.L.D fell, Clint? You get to care; you don’t get to dictate. Laura has your heart. Natasha has your back. All I have is your soulmark.”

“Don’t forget that I have yours too – it goes both ways.”

“Then you can learn to live with the idea of me with someone else.”

“Someone like Captain America?”

“If he wants me.” In spite of her conversation with Steve before, she’s not so sure about that. She doesn’t have it in her to be a shelter for Clint; she doubts she has it in her to be one for Steve. “And you’re not going to ‘talk’ to him either.”

Blue eyes glitter. “I wouldn’t give him advance warning anyway.”

“You’re not my keeper, Clint.”

“No, just your soulmate. And if I’d known—” He makes a noise of frustration. “If I’d known you’d be you—everything you are—I’d have _waited—_ ”

And Maria realises it’s the closest he’s ever come to saying he’d be with her in a heartbeat if not for Laura and his family. She’s always assumed it, but to _know_...

Too little too late, and probably just as well. Still, she pulls the knowledge close, a small satisfaction in the midst of loss.

“You didn’t wait.”

“No.” He looks away, and she can see him weighing things up in his head. _No._ Not like that. Not at that price.

“We wouldn’t be matched if you didn’t keep your word, Clint.”

He half-laughs. “That’s the hell of it, isn’t it.” He tucks his hands under his arms and stares at her, hungrily, as though imprinting her face in his memory. “So this is it? We walk away and never mention this again?”

“No. We walk away and live knowing the other one is happy.”

“And you will be?”

“Yes,” Maria tells him, hardly caring if it’s the truth or a lie. “I will.”

–

By the time Fury sends her to get some rest, she’s been awake for nearly forty-eight hours straight. Maria doesn’t have the emotional wherewithal to deal with Steve.

Yet, when the door to the gym slides open, he does nothing more than turn over and lift one arm to let her in under the blanket and fits himself up against her until her shivers stop.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he says when she's finally relaxed in his arms.

“I didn’t want to.” The honesty is bitter in her mouth. “I’m not a refuge, you know.”

“I know.” Steve takes her arm and runs his thumb along her left forearm, over the soulmark they can’t see in the darkness. “And I’m not Barton.”

“Just so we’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” he murmurs, his fingers tracing her skin. “I want you to be.”

“I’m sure.”

“Good.” His mouth nips lightly at hers. “Then this time you stay until morning.”

She stays until morning, and wakes to the heartbeat of a man who isn’t her soulmate, but just might turn out to mean a whole lot more.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Um, so I read your prompts and this took hold. And then after I got about halfway through writing this , I re-read your request and realised that you didn't want a Soulmark AU for these two anyway.
> 
> So...I'm sorry?
> 
> The story of Cooper Barton's essay about What My Dad Does For Work is told in AlphaFlyer's fic "[Holding Out For A Hero](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3899872)".


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